Ramblings about knitting, life, exploits, and other things.

September 06, 2009

We are NOT amused

While TypePad has been doing a masterful job at keeping the spam from actually going through so you can see it, I'm still getting notifications about every spam comment.

I posted late last night. I checked email today -- went to see if I'd gotten any comments on the latest pocket story, and saw that there were 23 new comments waiting for me. Wheee! Except that 21 of them were actually spam inviting me to come see what sound like truly repulsive porn sites.

That makes the "real" comments more precious in one way -- but still leaves me sad that all that crap is coming into my in box. If it keeps up, I may have to add an evil captcha thing to my comments :-(

I hate them. I really do. But if this keeps up, at least you'll know why I've done it to you.

I'm too irked by those spammers to even do the Unconscious Mutterings today.

Unfortunately, though I am pleased wtih TypePad for it's ability to protect you from reading the spam crap that some lesser persons seem compelled to send, I am really DISPLEASED with them for their treatment of the good comments and my ability to respond to them.

Without any warning whatsoever, TypePad has hijacked your email addresses. Last week, when someone wrote a comment to a post, TypePad sent it to me by email. The sender of the email was TypePad, but the "reply to" information was the email address you included.

THIS week, the reply to information looks something like this: reply-3P3N5JZE2qlmNZI_4A77NRnU6X7RF@typepad.com (okay, I've rearranged some letters, and added a few).

This means that I have a hard time communicating directly and personally to my commenters (unless I already have your email addresses), because, as far as I can tell, my replies don't GO to the commenter. (If I'm wrong on this, please let me know. Today, I responded to Anita and Sylvia before realizing this)

My replies go to the comment section on that post!!! (Ifyou've not received a response to a comment you made recently, check the posts -- I only just figured this out). Since I'm sending the reponses, they don't appear in my email as being there and they're not even on the list of comments in that part of the mangement stuff for the site; it was only by checking my site to see if the spam was making it to the page that I found my responses to your comments were being made public. So nice of them to WARN me.

I really dislike this. While it may be fine for some types of blogs -- this one has as one of its side features, an ability to engender personal correspondence between me and my readers. That has led to friendships. ... to invitations in both directions for me and my readers to meet at conventions, share hotel rooms, spend the night in each others' homes etc. Phone numbers and addresses get exchanged via private email... NOT gonna happen when the replies go on line! I'm off to find out how to get this fixed. If it annoys you too... please, go to http://typepad.com and complain!

Comments

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You are certainly not the only one who is annoyed with TypePad. Read Norma, and Cookie, and Angie, and VickiKnitorious. Probably others, too.

But all is not lost. I blogged last night about a work-around for this new *feature*. In a nutshell, you read and reply to comments at your Comment page at TypePad. Not as much fun or as zipless as doing in your own email, but good enough in a pinch.

If these spammers were people, I'd get at least some joy -- but I'm sure they're bots.
So, I've now gone and closed comments for that post too. Luckily, so far they're targeting month old posts, not fresh ones. I'll hate closing comments on fresh ones. If I'm really lucky, TypePad will fix its filter so it quits sending ME the ones it's already determined are spam.

Thanks.
It seems that this was part of their "upgrade" to the "new typepad" (some features got across the board implementation). Reading the comments on their feedback page for the "new" typepad -- about 98% of the folks who've tried it hate it. Partly b/c it doesn't work, but mostly b/c it's ill conceived, hard to get around in, etc.
At a minimum, I'll consider moving when my year is up...
Helen